Originally Posted by
CurtainTwitcher
It really was that simple. This whole crisis was to increase profit by $1 million per airframe in reduced training costs, for some large operators.
$280 million is a sizable chunk of change.
And of course you try to build what the customer wants. I read elsewhere that SWA wasn't really interested if it was going to take significant retraining/resources (may as well buy a different aircraft then). So if your primary customer wants something you try mighty hard to give it to them. At the same time SWA said sure we'll buy them under that scenario, but for us to commit we need some assurance you won't change the goal later, hence the $1 million incentive.
Sometimes you win such a gamble, sometimes not. Here, in the end, Boeing did not. Neither did SWA.